Anime Review: A Mangka's Weirdly Wonderful Workplace

In the Fall 2025 Season, we got an example of the genre of anime that I’d describe as “metatexual works about making anime and manga”. That series, A Mangka’s Weirdly Wonderful Workplace, isn’t as instructive or informative on how the industry works as other shows and manga series, like Monthly Girl’s Nozaki-kun, but it also avoids the self-indulgent pitfalls of Western works about how dramatic pieces of art get made. This makes for a series where a lot of the jokes just work, and it’s generally a fun experience.

The series follows Nana Futami, a mangaka who is working on a series about Shogi, and who has significant social anxiety, and is almost certainly on-spectrum. We also meet her assistant Mizuki Hazama, her editor Kaede Sat?, her Shogi advisor Toko Kakunodate, and her long-time friend and self proclaimed rival Arisa Nashida. The series then basically gets into fun workplace sitcom hyginx, except around a creative field. In particular, the series does a good job of getting humor out of how Nana’s anxiety interacts with some of the social elements of being a mangaka, but without feeling like punching down.

It all makes for a series that I’d describe as “wholesome”. Yeah, there are some jokes about people being startled by the idea that women draw smutty seinen manga, but it made for a light workplace comedy – which is kind of what I need right now. Honestly, considering the past few weeks, if this season has continued, I’d have been quite pleased. With the state of the world, I could do with a light emotional palate clenser.

A Mangka’s Weirdly Wonderful Workplace can be found streaming: